The Distant Father, 30 April 2018

It’s a hard loneliness that stems from failing
To do well by someone else, someone loved.
It’s not the soft solitude of a contented hour
In a quiet chair in the mild, spring sun. It is
The ache, almost like lost love itself, of not
Being with that person one could help. My child
Is far away from me this afternoon, this week,
The better part of this month, and it’s my fault,
And I know that she is suffering for it, not just
The lack of my companionship, although we like
Each other’s company, but also my protection
From the riptides of other caregivers’ emotions,
From bullying children, from her own being alone.
This is sentimental parent stuff, and thus
Not to be trusted, not even by myself. So what.
If I were there or if my child were here, life,
Which is cruel on purpose, would not be perfect,
Let’s not romanticize this, but it would involve
Her shedding fewer tears, holding fewer fears.

Evanston, Wyoming, 29 April 2018

Similar to the Evanston of August, 2000,
When you drove in. Similar to the Evanston
Of aught seven. But of course not the same.
Never the same. Change is eventually
Compounding, even in Evanston, and is
Even something of an ambush predator,
There as everywhere, under the unseen trapdoor.
In 2011, in an Evanston not quite this Evanston,
An officer pulled you over because the inspection
Sticker on your license plate had faded.
She examined it closely, that Evanston officer,
Then determined that it was not expired, but
You needed to procure a new one. And now,
That new sticker is as faded as the old one,
In ever-fading, unexpired Evanston, but no one
Pulls you over on this occasion. A cloud
Wanders in from the horizon, and you’ve
Driven on and away from yet another Evanston.
A billboard vows you’ll come to Hell or Heaven soon.

A Narrow Path With Here and There a Traveler, Big Cottonwood Canyon, 28 April 2018

In Alabama, near Sand Mountain twenty

Years ago, shape-note singers chorused 

In their slightly otherworldly way for me,

Familiar hymns of Isaac Watts among the tunes

Interpreted. Memory reheard them on a hot day

During a spring heatwave in the Wasatch Range.

The Latter Day Saints as well adopted a number

Of those old Congregationalist hymns, albeit

For a rather different theology than that held

By Watts or the shape-note singers of Alabama.

I think they liked the way his lyrics deployed 

The words “saint” and “saints” frequently, as in,

“The fearful soul that tires and faints,
And walks the ways of God no more,
Is but esteemed almost a saint,
And makes his own destruction sure.”

It was that hymn in particular, “Broad Is the Road

That Leads to Death,” crossed my mind

As I sought sanctuary in a shady canyon.

I nudged myself as far up and into the woods

As I could go, but still there were more folks

And machines getting in there ahead of me.

There is no narrow path we can’t make broad

And crowded, and the only reason so few

Get all the quiet way to heaven is that the crush

Of everyone seeking the straight and narrow

Is what creates the broad way to destruction.

Laughing Hysterically, 27 April 2018

The proditomanic mamamouchi
In the big white house had preoccupied,
Once again, talk show jokes about the news.
Humans between our revolutions choose
The most trivial forms of resistance.
Whether we live our lives in police states
Or egalitarian villages,
We rely on the tried and true release
Granted us by mockery of bullies,
No idea why mockery keeps the peace.

Invention of a Minor Planet, 26 April 2018

If a half truth is a whole lie, any whole truth
Is two lies. You could laugh and say,
That’s moral math for you, but I say it’s true.
Two lies. There’s nothing humans invented
More deceitful, more tricky than the truth.
Check around this minor planet. Lots of life
Works on various principles of deception.
But to generate a concept (any old concept,
But bear with us, this one is special) of truth
That transcends, that stands apart, essentially,
From its counter-concept, the lie, was itself
A brilliant double lie: first, that there’s such truth,
And second that everything outside it’s a lie.
The truth is a technology, one among many,
An invention. Invention’s another word for a lie.
Well, the universe speaks for itself through us,
Us and our technologies, a few among its products.
We’re only exceptional to our own rules, but
Surely we have thus generated a hint about this
Cosmos of the cloven hoof. Is that not true?

The Oracle of Nephi, Utah, 25 April 2018

What we know is never enough to prevent us
Wanting something more impossible to adore.
It’s not pretty when one faith sweeps away
A host of others, is it Emperor Julian?
No talking spring. The water that once spoke
Is heard no more. Peasants and indigenes take it
Hardest, hiding their worship at the old shrines
For generations after they’ve acquiesced,
Even after they’re no longer sure what worship
At the old shrines was for, even when old faith
Lingers only as the ghost known as folklore.
It will happen again, rest assured. The temples
Of the winners will be fought over, burned,
And ignored. The evidence is certain, is sure.
But faiths still go to battle daily, fiercely
Determined to win a final victory in the Name
Of some unnameable Lord. Not everyone picks
A particular side, of course. But the true faith,
The one, true faith, the faith above all faiths,
Is the faith that the true faith will be, must be,
Cannot but be eternally restored. Oh, Lord.

End of the World, Utah, 24 April 2018

Supposedly, Barack Obama told disconsolate
White House staffers, the morning after
Donald Trump’s election to succeed him,
“It’s not the end of the world until
It's the end of the world.” Yesterday,
Roughly a year and a half later, a van
Plowed through pedestrians in Toronto,
Killing at least ten of them, and the Saudis
Bombed a wedding in Yemen, killing twenty
Or thirty civilians. Not the end of the world.
The day before that, a man wearing a jacket
And nothing else opened fire with an AR-15
In a Nashville Waffle House, killing four, and a bomb
Went off in Afghanistan among a crowd
Registering to vote, slaughtering thirty
Or more. Also not the end of the world. More
Killing to report tomorrow, I’m sure. Survivors
Of the great plagues such as the Black Death
And others often wrote of all the bodies
Being piled or burned, the emptied cities
And overgrown fields, as the end of the world,
But no, not the end of the world. My mother
Was fond of pointing out that when she was a girl,
World War Two bid fair to be the end of the world,
But no. Not the end of the world. I was an infant
At her breast, literally, during the Cuban
Missile Crisis. Not the end of the world.
We need to redefine the end of the world.
Or maybe I just don’t give a damn about the end
Of the world as fantasized. It never happens,
And yet, every day, in the fat and moneyed
Peacetime USA alone, the world ends, the whole
World that ever was ends and then never was
For upwards of seven thousand people.
And even in America, most worlds don't end by guns.
Things fall apart. People get sick and old.
Three hundred American worlds an hour,
Five per minute, another every dozen seconds
Or so, go the way of all worlds. If you’re absorbing
These words, friend, you have not yet seen
The end of the world, but you will, you know,
And I who have not seen it either also know.
We all know it’s always the end of the world.